About This Show

These lyrics are from the opening song in The Legend of The Waitress & The Robber, written two years before Covid washed up on our shores. Its playful, irreverent look at the isolation inherent in our complicated contemporary culture is made even more urgent now, after two years of pandemic separation.

Set in a dystopian society, The Legend of The Waitress & The Robber is a comic-book-style mash-up inspired by Friedrich Schiller’s play The Robbers and the Korean novel The Story of Hong Gildong, both Robin Hood-style stories of individuals betrayed by their families. With nods to Weill and Brecht, the characters sing and dance as they fight for what they believe, challenging the timeworn concepts of family and perceptions of ownership and justice.

The Waitress, fed up with watching her elderly customers be mistreated by their children, kidnaps these seniors so she can give them the care they deserve. Meanwhile, the Second Son, accused by his brother of being a thief, becomes a robber who “liberates” people from the clutches of their cellular devices.

The exciting cross-cultural collaboration is performed in English and Korean, with subtitles for both. The cast features NYC-based actors Carlo Adinolfi; Rolls Andre; Hye Young Chyun; Lisa Kitchens; Eunji Lim; James A Pierce III. They are joined by actors from Korea: Ju Yeon Choi; Nam Pyo Kim; Yura Noh; Kyongsik Won. The design team includes Carlo Adinolfi (sets); Laura Anderson Barbata (costumes). The musical directors are Jacob Kerzner and Hee Eun Kim.

The NYC premiere follows a three-week residency at PS21- Chatham, culminating in two preview performances of The Legend of The Waitress & The Robber on May 21 & 22 at the upstate venue.

But the journey to the NYC stage for The Legend of The Waitress & The Robber took much longer.

In 2017, writer/director Renee Philippi received an Asian Cultural Council grant to study contemporary Korean theater practices. In the spring of 2018, she and producing partner and scenic designer Carlo Adinolfi spent six weeks in Seoul with members of Playfactory Mabangzen. It was there that a collaboration was born. MBZ traveled to NYC for a two-week developmental workshop in 2018. Philippi and Adinolfi again traveled to Seoul in early 2019 before bringing the entire NYC company there in October 2019 for a four-week residency and in-process showing. The Legend of The Waitress & The Robber was to have its premiere in New York City in April 2020, but was curtailed by the pandemic. Now, over two years later, it finally arrives.